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of course one of the reasons for EE is so they can go through spring practice especially for JUCO.....the other reason is that it allows a school to count them back to the previous year and therefore take a larger class the next next, which is what UT has done.....but those players still count against the hard cap of 85, and having an unusually large class one year creates problems down the road because that will force them to reduce their classes in the future. So if they're wrong on a bunch of this year's class, it going to kill them down the road.

So much discussion over an arbitrary ranking system given by a set of guys that have usually never seen the kid play in person.

Here's how I see the ranking system:

5 stars: Everyone's heard of this kid and everyone agrees he's great.
4 stars: Talented player. Someone somewhere is hyping him up a lot, other people agree
3 stars: D1 talent
2 stars: Not enough people have seen him, or he's getting no pub
Not ranked: Nobody has watched his film.

While the star rankings have some value, think about Rivals "point" system for a moment. DJ Smith is ranked as a 4 star player with a ranking of 5.8. Shaq Davidson is ranked as a 3 star player with a ranking of 5.7. So... what the hell separates DJ Smith and Shaq Davidson by one tenth of a point?

Rivals, in fact, dropped Shaq an amazing 44 spots in their rankings just a couple of weeks ago.

Why? What happened between Jan 1 and Jan 23rd to move him that far down?

If you guessed that it was because he was solidly committed and other WRs were generating a lot of buzz between coaches you'd be right.

Despite all this there are still fans that would feel so much better if only Shaq had that fourth star.

Great point. Kids can get hurt right at the end of the season or during the playoffs and can get dropped down. As Coach Brad Lawing said many times in the past when he was here that "he could add stars or take away stars from any kid he was recruiting"!!! Also, I don't think anybody on this website is saying that we can win a National Championship with 2 Star Players, but I think we can win with 2 Star, 3 Star, 4 Star Players every year if the kids have the heart and desire to play and our coaching staff is a good one. Plus, the one main ingredient that ever team has to have in order to win a National Championship, no matter how many 5 Star Recruits it has own it's roster is a GOLDEN HORSE SHOE UP THEIR BEHINDS! During the course of a full season, you have got to win the ballgames where the football bounces your way or you get the "tipped pass or bobbled punt return". Without this type of luck, you will not win. Go back and look at every team that has won the NCG for 20 years and see if they did not get all the "breaks" the year that they won it all.

So much discussion over an arbitrary ranking system given by a set of guys that have usually never seen the kid play in person.

Here's how I see the ranking system:

5 stars: Everyone's heard of this kid and everyone agrees he's great.
4 stars: Talented player. Someone somewhere is hyping him up a lot, other people agree
3 stars: D1 talent
2 stars: Not enough people have seen him, or he's getting no pub
Not ranked: Nobody has watched his film.

While the star rankings have some value, think about Rivals "point" system for a moment. DJ Smith is ranked as a 4 star player with a ranking of 5.8. Shaq Davidson is ranked as a 3 star player with a ranking of 5.7. So... what the hell separates DJ Smith and Shaq Davidson by one tenth of a point?

Rivals, in fact, dropped Shaq an amazing 44 spots in their rankings just a couple of weeks ago.

Why? What happened between Jan 1 and Jan 23rd to move him that far down?

If you guessed that it was because he was solidly committed and other WRs were generating a lot of buzz between coaches you'd be right.

Despite all this there are still fans that would feel so much better if only Shaq had that fourth star.

more than that really. the 4 and 5 stars are guys that shined when the were wee sophomores and freshmen in HS. They get the attention while the ignored people grow bigger stronger better finally get a chance to start on the team and shine but the Georgias and Alabamas and Floridas are too busy fighting over those dudes that were so good as youngins that they pretty much ignore these "late-bloomers"

So much discussion over an arbitrary ranking system given by a set of guys that have usually never seen the kid play in person.

Here's how I see the ranking system:

5 stars: Everyone's heard of this kid and everyone agrees he's great.
4 stars: Talented player. Someone somewhere is hyping him up a lot, other people agree
3 stars: D1 talent
2 stars: Not enough people have seen him, or he's getting no pub
Not ranked: Nobody has watched his film.

While the star rankings have some value, think about Rivals "point" system for a moment. DJ Smith is ranked as a 4 star player with a ranking of 5.8. Shaq Davidson is ranked as a 3 star player with a ranking of 5.7. So... what the hell separates DJ Smith and Shaq Davidson by one tenth of a point?

Rivals, in fact, dropped Shaq an amazing 44 spots in their rankings just a couple of weeks ago.

Why? What happened between Jan 1 and Jan 23rd to move him that far down?

If you guessed that it was because he was solidly committed and other WRs were generating a lot of buzz between coaches you'd be right.

Despite all this there are still fans that would feel so much better if only Shaq had that fourth star.

And yet some on here will continue to whine and not actually acknowledge any of the salient points you illuminate herein.

A little too much emphasis is put on the ~30 5* guys. Bama isn't just getting 5 or 6 of them, but also 15+ 4-star guys. Their lowest rated commit this year is a kicker, the next lowest rated a Juco TE who was previously at UGA. That depth matters every bit as much as the handful of guys at the top.

And to comment on the Davidson ratings, you have to remember that the ratings are an ongoing process with so many high school players. What happened between Jan 1 and Jan 23 was that the rivals and 247 guys saw Davidson in person against top-level talent at the all star games. By all accounts he didn't look great and appeared to be much more of a project than previously thought (raw physically and technically at WR). That's why the rating dropped. Smith on the other hand appears to be physically ready to go.

The ratings aren't perfect, but some of you guys are going too far in the other direction trashing them. On the whole they're very good with how much an inexact science evaluating players can be.

Assuming that Wideman and Sawyer make it into school, there will still be plenty of opportunity for Blackshear, Rivers, and Key. We'll have lost some of our current DEs to graduation/attrition, meaning there won't be guys stacked up in front of them. Key looks like a guy headed for a RS anyway, unless he packs on some lbs.
Bottom line is that getting so many DEs in this class shouldn't have much effect on those 3, though you can be sure other schools will try and play that card. 2 of the 3 are already committed, and Key as mentioned is coming here in all likelihood.

A little too much emphasis is put on the ~30 5* guys. Bama isn't just getting 5 or 6 of them, but also 15+ 4-star guys. Their lowest rated commit this year is a kicker, the next lowest rated a Juco TE who was previously at UGA. That depth matters every bit as much as the handful of guys at the top.

And to comment on the Davidson ratings, you have to remember that the ratings are an ongoing process with so many high school players. What happened between Jan 1 and Jan 23 was that the rivals and 247 guys saw Davidson in person against top-level talent at the all star games. By all accounts he didn't look great and appeared to be much more of a project than previously thought (raw physically and technically at WR). That's why the rating dropped. Smith on the other hand appears to be physically ready to go.

The ratings aren't perfect, but some of you guys are going too far in the other direction trashing them. On the whole they're very good with how much an inexact science evaluating players can be.

If Davidson is more of a raw project than originally thought, then how would you describe Jacob Park as a prospect? I guarantee it doesn't fall in line with what his star rating and ranking indicates!!!

__________________"Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts."

We've done it before (did it with Garcia).
I think our coaches encourage JUCO and prep school guys to do it, but I think they want our HS seniors to experience their entire SR year.

I think Connor Mitch also enrolled early.

I also think it is typically QBs that do that...no reason for a HS SR Olinemen to enroll early since the will probably RS anyway...same with defensive guys.
Mostly for guys that are a lock to play day 1, and I don't think this class has any day 1 locks...a lot of guys that will compete for playing time, but I think most of this class is going to RS.

I see what you're saying, but I think it's always a positive thing to get guys in as early as possible. That way they are already practicing with the team, learning the system and working out with the strength coaches. I just saw Bama had 8 guys enroll early. Seems like a big advantage to get these guys in asap.

I see what you're saying, but I think it's always a positive thing to get guys in as early as possible. That way they are already practicing with the team, learning the system and working out with the strength coaches. I just saw Bama had 8 guys enroll early. Seems like a big advantage to get these guys in asap.

It is an advantage, but not every recruit can graduate early. I think we do this as often as we can with recruits we want. We are not just going to take a recruit because early enrollment is an option. From my understanding the counting back of early enrollees to the previous class cannot exceed the 25 LOI limit. Is this not correct? Seems like some teams are going beyond that...

__________________"Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts."

It is an advantage, but not every recruit can graduate early. I think we do this as often as we can with recruits we want. We are not just going to take a recruit because early enrollment is an option. From my understanding the counting back of early enrollees to the previous class cannot exceed the 25 LOI limit. Is this not correct? Seems like some teams are going beyond that...

I think it's an option to countback. So if USC's whole 2015 class is EE and USC recruited 21 this year -1 EE, than 5 of those signee's for 2015 can be counted back to the 2014 class. So USC could take 30 recruits next year, but as others have said if you do things like this, and you don't have that many seniors or Juniors getting drafted. There will be some years you will have to take a small class, so you don't exceed the 85 player scholarship limits. UT will probably face that problem in a couple of years. Watch for Ut's 2016 class to be small if players don't transfer, or have their scholarship taken away.

I see what you're saying, but I think it's always a positive thing to get guys in as early as possible. That way they are already practicing with the team, learning the system and working out with the strength coaches. I just saw Bama had 8 guys enroll early. Seems like a big advantage to get these guys in asap.

So now that the excitement of signing day has come and gone, coupled with it being a slow day at the office, I decided to try and put some metrics to our recruiters for the 2014 class.

Here is my methodology. I took all of our recruits and looked at both their composite score on 24-7 and their 24-7 score. Since the 247 composite is listed as a decimal (0.9528) and their regular score is listed as a whole number less than 100, I multiplied their composite by 100 then added the two together and divided by 2. For example. BAW has a composite of 0.9503 and a 247 score of 96. After I normalized the first score, that gave BAW a rank of 95.515

I then examined who recruited them. For example BAW was recruited solely by Whammy. So I gave Whammy all of the points for BAW. If a recruit had a secondary recruiter I gave the primary guy 100% of those points and the secondary guy 50% of those points. For example. Dante Sawyer had a score of 94.875 in my arbitrary system. He was recruited by Mangus and Adams. So I gave Mangus all 94.875 points and Adams 47.4375 points. Unfair? Possibly, but stay with me. Here's how it all shook out.

I see what you're saying, but I think it's always a positive thing to get guys in as early as possible. That way they are already practicing with the team, learning the system and working out with the strength coaches. I just saw Bama had 8 guys enroll early. Seems like a big advantage to get these guys in asap.

It's just not the usual situation. Most recruits need to finish their last semester of highschool before they can qualify for college. Most recruits want to enjoy the rest of their senior year. JUCO guys usually EE which makes me worried about Thomas not being able to qualify by the end of the year. Also, didn't really have any pressing need this year for countbacks since we couldn't really since a huge class this time.

It's just not the usual situation. Most recruits need to finish their last semester of highschool before they can qualify for college. Most recruits want to enjoy the rest of their senior year. JUCO guys usually EE which makes me worried about Thomas not being able to qualify by the end of the year. Also, didn't really have any pressing need this year for countbacks since we couldn't really since a huge class this time.

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath for Thomas. But really hope he will make it in.